Desperate Measures
by Elleth Vallen
Summary: Tommy Gavin keeps a promise when his ex-wife refuses to tell him where she's moving their children. Set after the completion of the first season. Rated R for strong language and possibly some adult content.
1. Chapter 1

_This is bullshit,_ Tommy thought, crouching under the windowsill. _What the hell am I doing here?_ One second he's on top of the world, running into burning buildings, saving lives, and now….

_I'm hiding behind a bush, spying on my ex-wife. How sick can I get?_

Tommy knew he shouldn't be there, but what else could he do? Janet wouldn't tell him where she was taking the kids, and he had to find out. They were his kids too, and Jan would just have to accept it the hard way.

* * *

_"I will hunt you down, I will follow you to the end of the earth if you take my children away from me!" Tommy could feel the veins bulge in his neck and temples, and his face burned with hot blood. His rage blurred his vision and the whiskey made him hotter._

_Janet flinched away from him. Her fear satisfied him and emboldened his fury. _

_Tommy slammed the door behind him, shaking the house, and apparently the entire neighborhood. A wave of hot wrath flowed of him, and the street felt ablaze._

_If that bitch wanted to take his kids away from him, she'd get a shit-storm._

* * *

Tommy pressed his fingers into his eyes until they hurt the back of his eye sockets. Only when Tommy heard Jan's car start and pull out of the driveway did the memory fade.

He waited until they were out of sight, and came out of his hiding spot. Janet had left the back door unlocked for the movers, and Tommy let himself in. The hole's he'd put in the walls had been fixed, and the broken glass cleaned up. He searched the kitchen for an address or a phone number, and found only his ex-mother-in-law's phone number, with a note to the movers that said, "If you have any problems, call my mother Mary, and she will be able to help you out."

The only woman he knew crazier than Janet was Janet's mother. She hated Tommy from the beginning, and certainly loathed him after the separation. There was no way in hell he was going to call her.

Tommy stalked around the kitchen, opening drawers, cabinets, but nothing. It was all in boxes for the movers. He opened the liquor cabinet. _Damn, she threw it away. _He'd just have to wait until he got home to drink.

At last he left the kitchen to climb the stairs towards his kids' rooms. He stopped at the top of the stairs when he saw inside his eldest daughter's open bedroom.

The only thing inside was sealed boxes and blank walls.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

_Tommy lunged at the stretcher being loaded into the ambulance. In a flash, Lou and the chief both had their arms around him, but Tommy threw them aside and continued towards his daughter's lifeless form, battered and bloody on the stretcher. He let out an animalistic howl of anguish._

_Six of his team members surrounded him, each one pushing against Tommy with all their weight. Rage and adrenaline overtook his body as he tore against these enemies trying to hurt his daughter._

_After an eternity of struggling, Tommy's little girl was loaded out of sight in the ambulance and the six firefighters had finally forced him to the shrapnel-littered ground and lay on top of him. He didn't feel the tears of agony that burned his flushed cheeks, but they blurred his vision nonetheless, drowning him in blindness._

Tommy cried out and punched the wall, fracturing three knuckles and leaving a gratifying smear of bright red on the stark paint. In a new flash of physical pain, his mental torment faded.

Down stairs, the back door opened and three men's voices drifted upstairs.

The movers.

"Shit," Tommy breathed, hurrying to the window in his son's room that overlooked the roof above the dining room. He kicked out the screen and dropped onto the roof, then lowered himself to the ground below and made his way around Janet's house to the backdoor.

"Hey guys, what's going on?" he asked the movers.

One of the movers did a double take. "Is this… you aren't the homeowner, are you?"

"Huh? Oh no, I'm Janet's neighbor. She didn't tell me she was moving. I'd have helped her out."

The mover eased up a little, and proffered a hand. "Name's Jack." Jack's Jersey accent became apparent with his introduction.

Tommy shock Jack's hand. "Tommy." He sighed and looked around. "So, where's Janet moving anyhow?"

Jack scratched the back of his head. "I don't know, exactly. We're supposed to get the truck out to Cleveland, and then another crew is going to take over, but I don't know where they're going from there."

Tommy nodded and smiled. "Thanks. Well, see ya'." With that, he turned and headed across the street to his house.

_Cleveland. Where the hell could she possibly be going?_

He peeked through the kitchen curtains at the movers. "Guess I'll have to follow them, like I said I would."

He took of swig of Jack Daniels straight from the bottle, and spoke into the neck. "I'm comin' to get you, bitch."


	3. Chapter 3

The movers had the truck loaded sometime after four pm. Tommy sat in his pick-up waiting for them to roll out of Janet's driveway toward Cleveland, and then… who knows?

The moving van pulled out of the driveway. Tommy waited a minute and followed it, keeping his lights off until he really needed them to avoid attracting unwanted attention, particularly from the drivers of the moving van.

The van headed west on I-80. Tommy kept back a few car lengths, and one lane to the right. He didn't know what he'd do when they got to Cleveland. He guessed he'd wing it when he got there.

Tommy lit a cigarette and inhaled, staring blankly at the endless stretch of highway. The road continued on through Pennsylvania, long and generally straight. It wasn't like the highways in New York. They were treacherous, from a fireman's point of view. After a while, he'd learned what to expect at a highway job: carnage.

"I want to go home." The girl laid her head back down on the hood of the car. The only place she was going was the morgue; her back and neck were broken.

* * *

_Tommy found himself surrounded by flames. Gas tanks had ruptured and fuel covered the asphalt; it burned._

_"Highway job," Franco had said. Tommy knew what that meant._

_Recovery. Damage control._

_Sometimes, the carnage was so bad, the FD was merely a formality, so the city could say they did all they could._

_"Please. I want to go home." Tommy blinked at the girl. He knew she was dead._

_Apparently it didn't stop her from speaking to him.

* * *

_

The car behind him flashed her high beams, which reflected off the rearview mirror into Tommy's eyes, startling him in time to avoid the concrete divider flying towards him. The car's lights also awoke him in time to see the moving van merge to exit the interstate. Tommy dodged in and out of traffic to cross the highway before he missed the exit.

Normally, he'd have had to have been drunk to pull a maneuver like that, but this time he didn't have anything to worry about losing. Jan had already taken everything else from him.

And by God, he was going to take it back.


End file.
